Mindbenders by Ted Krever Page B

tons of rock down a hill doesn’t suit me anymore.” His eyes were miles away again, that look I’d seen a couple of other times on his face.
    Was that not a phrase with him? Was he actually looking miles away? He started rifling through the glovebox. “We’ll need money,  a map and to fill the car up,” he said. “Then we’ll figure out the next step.”
    “Ruben Crowell, Gettysburg Pennsylvania,” I repeated.
    “I’m not sure that’s it. What if Dave made the same mistake we did— I did—assuming the network was under attack? Clearly, at least one part of it—Miriam Fine—is on the other side. I’m not sure what that means. And by the way,” he stared at me, “it’s not how many fucking guys are after me. You’re the one with the list in your head.”
    That stopped conversation for a while. The signs promised a rest stop thirty miles ahead.
    “Throwing chunks of a hillside around—that’s mindreading?” I asked.
    “No, that’s my hobby,” he laughed. “Electrons are electrons. Matter is bound together by vibration, by harmonic sympathy. So if you can manipulate the vibration,  you can manipulate—rearrange—just about anything at the subatomic level. Now, it’s one thing to know  about it—it’s another to do it. I’ve been playing with this for thirty years and all I’ve got are a couple of childish tricks. Nonetheless, they’re  good for wreaking havoc.” He sighed—I probably looked like a fish, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. “It’s exhausting too. If the rest stop has a decent cheeseburger, I want one.”
    We filled up the Audi and parked it behind a couple of tractor-trailers, out of sight of the highway. On the way to the food court, we bought a map and all the newspapers they had.
    “How come they can’t read our thoughts to follow us?” I asked as we sat down.
    “I’m blocking us.”
    “You could read the bearded guy—wasn’t he a mindbender?”
    “Ha! That guy was useless. I broke right through.”
    “So you can read anybody?”
    “No. I couldn’t read Dave if he wanted to stop me. But these? Whoever hired these guys, they like people with minimal ability.” The waitress brought our food. I had a Caesar Salad; he dug into a cheeseburger with fries.
    “That’s not good for you, you know,” I told him. “Bad for your cholesterol.”
    “Cholesterol is a myth,” he answered like he’d checked it out on the subatomic level, stuffing a few extra fries in around the corners of his mouth. “After a morning of rock-arrangement, we real men want beef .”
    I was wondering if his real name was Max Renn—or was the Max as phony as the Dulles? He could read minds and plant thoughts in your mind and play around with the vibrations that held the world together. The scary part was, I’d seen enough to actually have to take the idea seriously. Knowing he wasn’t making up such ridiculous stuff didn’t prove any more comforting than the alternative. Thinking about him seemed to lead inevitably to double negatives.
    “What about those people? You made them give us their car? And go on vacation? Just like that?” Renn nodded, smiling his chilly smile. If he could read my mind, he knew what was coming, but he was waiting, humoring me, as I edged into my subject.
    “They got away,” he answered. “So they won’t be able to give information about their car for at least a couple of days. And now, since they haven’t found us, the bad guys will have to track them , just in case we were hiding in the Winnebago.” He stared at the parking lot with a look I didn’t like. “We’ll have to ditch the car.”
    “It’s a nice car,” I started. Way nicer than his, though I didn’t say so. Air conditioning, for one thing.
    “Don’t get attached,” he warned. “Everything is temporary.”
    I got back to my subject. “If you could make those people do what they did—are you making me go with you?”
    He smiled the best he knew how, which wasn’t much. “No,”